I used to attend elementary school on a military base. I didn't feel like a human shield at the time, then again I was more naive and had less life experience than I do now.
You weren’t a human shield. It would have been very easy for the US and Israel to not have blown up a school, the attack was intentional.
Notice they had 0 issues precisely striking the building housing Iranian leadership when this whole thing started. They didn’t “accidentally” hit the grocery store two blocks away.
So you think there was a conspiracy to target a school? Who do you think did it? Why? What was their goal?
I think either an intelligence failure, or a mistake or a miss is more likely. Maybe missiles don't always hit where they were meant to go. Especially if there is anti missile defences (which Iran is likely to have). Maybe Iran anti-air hit the school, or sent a US missile off course?
More than a conspiracy, they actually did attack the school - twice - about 30 minute apart (double tap).
They would have had live video feed from drones, and images sent from the first tomahawk missile for target confirmation. Yhey knew exactly what they were targeting and hitting.
> They would have had live video feed from drones, and images sent from the first tomahawk missile for target confirmation. Yhey knew exactly what they were targeting and hitting.
You sure? IIRC it was one of about 6000 strikes. Was it all a cover to bomb one school?
Forget "rules based order" or any sympathy from US Military/Pentagon/DoD.
When "arabs" bomb "the West" - it's "terrorism". When "the West" bomb "arabs" - it's a "mistake".
Same forces that did laser precision strikes against Maduro or countless military heads of Iran are attacking civilian infrastructure with double tap precision.
I am amazed how since WW2 there wasn't a military coup in USA as many wars from them were against any logic. I guess it just proves year after year, generation after generation that US military from top-to-bottom thinks that they are the only "good guys" and have been brainwashed just as their counterparts (be it Iraqis, Iranians, Chinese or anyone).
It is amazing how readily some people believe we target civilians, often based on the words of actual terrorists.
With this particular incident with apparent US strikes on a school adjacent to a military complex, and formerly part of that military complex, you would think it must be obvious to any reasonable person that we did not knowingly target a school.
And if it was an accident it only gives us more reason to oppose the whole operation. Why should we believe what they think they "know" about uranium stocks or anything else, if they couldn't figure out a building has been a school for 10+ years?
I also wonder if they really should have known by the second or third strike, but I can't readily find whether they had a live visual or anything, so probably did not. Arguably you can't in good conscience strike a target you can't see well, but I'm sure it happens all the time and doesn't usually go this bad.
When terrorists like the Trump administration openly admit to it in some cases and threaten to do it in others, and we see the evidence, it’s easy to believe our eyes and ears over your fantasies.
We are so far past there being any merit to “Israel would never knowingly target civilians/children/hospitals/etc” that you just shouldn’t even bother. Just own it, if your leadership thinks the only winning strategy is the annihilation of another people, or at least their complete displacement, own it. Stop trying to hide behind “it was a mistake” while simultaneously showing you have no issues putting a missile through a singular car window to assassinate people labeled an enemy. Nobody buys it anymore.
For planning Operation Epic Fury, the US military utilized the Maven Smart System, an artificial intelligence software designed to streamline the targeting process and greatly reduce the amount of personnel involved in it. Capable of producing 1,000 target packages in one hour, with the use of the system the US military said it had struck 6,000 targets in Iran during the first two weeks of the war.
...it goes on to say...
The [NYT] inquiry suggested that the school was likely targeted due to outdated coordinates provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency
Advanced rockets bolted onto mainframes guided by data from Palantir.
> For what reason would they attack a single school?
Couldn't it be to terrorise the other side while still being able to claim that it was a mistake? Remember that the school was hit by three distinct strikes.
Today on several news media were a story that people of Iran were called by the government and formed human shields at the bridges and power plants that Trump threatened to bomb if no deal reached by the deadline.
No it's not. International law is generally exceptionally clear that one war crime doesn't justify another, and using civilians as human shields is about as core a war-crime as war-crimes get.
> The prohibition of using human shields in the Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol I and the Statute of the International Criminal Court are couched in terms of using the presence (or movements) of civilians or other protected persons to render certain points or areas (or military forces) immune from military operations.[18] Most examples given in military manuals, or which have been the object of condemnations, have been cases where persons were actually taken to military objectives in order to shield those objectives from attacks. The military manuals of New Zealand and the United Kingdom give as examples the placing of persons in or next to ammunition trains.
The situation in Iran is not this. The suggestion was that humans might volunteer to go to non-military sites.
As an extreme hypothetical, are humans living in their homes acting as human shields for those homes? How about people at school? How about people parading on a bridge? Does it become different if someone threatens to blow up a bridge and people parade there in response?
Eh, the quoted text, and also the literal text of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 28 [1], doesn't qualify "certain points or areas" as only "military sites". While the other side should only be attacking military sites I don't see how that could possibly justify protecting non-military sites with human shields.
> As an extreme hypothetical, are humans living in their homes acting as human shields for those homes? How about people at school? How about people parading on a bridge?
Generally speaking I read this as not, because they aren't being "used to" render those points immune from attack, they just happen to be doing so. Hypothetically if you were to rush civilians back to their homes in an evacuated town to protect it from an attack - or as you suggest organize parades on bridges that are threatened - that would seem to meet the "used to" requirement.
Article 54 gives some sites that may not be attacked. Maybe a protected person cannot render at least those sites “immune” since they are already immune.
When Lithuania was fighting for independence from USSR civilians gathered around key government buildings to protect them. in a sense they were human shields as none of them were armed. but they did it voluntarily. this happens when you threaten total annihilation of your homeland.
how do you know that iranians are forced to do this now by their government and not doing this in support of their country? do you think there are gunmen taking them to the bridges?
It was a government call. I grew up in USSR and know very well how those government "calls to volunteer" work in totalitarian regimes. Especially in a wartime country where even in peacetime they would kill people even just for being incorrectly dressed.
Anyway, as i said in the other comment, it is actually not that important how all those people got there. The key thing here is that it was a deliberate government act of human shield creation.
Threatening total annihilation was possibly the dumbest move Trump could have made.
“ Soldiers when in desperate straits lose the sense of fear. If there is no place of refuge, they will stand firm. If they are in the heart of a hostile country, they will show a stubborn front. If there is no help for it, they will fight hard."
Look at recordings from other totalitarian regimes - enthusiastic people doing government bidding. The key is deliberate act of human shield creation, not the specific way to do it.
Notice they had 0 issues precisely striking the building housing Iranian leadership when this whole thing started. They didn’t “accidentally” hit the grocery store two blocks away.